In a conspicuously low-key but resolute appearance before a
Memphis Regional Chamber of Commerce audience at the Memphis Marriot East
Thursday morning, a newly reelected Mayor Willie Herenton proclaimed a broad
agenda for his fifth term and declared, “The next four years I’m hitting the
ground. I’m hitting it hard. I’m going to let it all hang out.”
Appearing subdued and almost somber at times, the mayor
laid before the packed audience at the Chamber’s “Breakfast Forum 280907” a wish
list of key objectives — prominently including city/county consolidation;
Fairgrounds and riverfront development; and resolution of issues involving Beale
Street and the National Civil Rights Museum.
“We need to consolidate. We’ve been singing that song, and
we’re going to open that hymnbook again,” Herenton vowed. He went on to note
wryly, “I’m not without bold ideas. I just don’t have the support.”
Acquiring such support on this and other issues would be a
major objective, he said, clearly striving to avoid a confrontational tone, “I
can’t do it by myself. I need you to help me,” he acknowledged, going so far as
to strike an accustomed note of modesty. “I’m just an average person,” declared
the man who on other occasions has seemed to profess divine sanction for his
actions.
Continuing in the conciliatory vein, he mayor said somewhat
pointedly, “I don’t want to be accused of bashing the media.” Nor did he, though
he ran through a laundry list of public concerns vented by the media (among them
Iraq, global warming, demographic shifts locally) and lamented, “We function on
negatives rather than positives.”
Though his remarks were largely cast in generalities, the
mayor seemed to take sides in the currently percolating controversy over
community-versus-corporate control of the Civil Rights Museum. “Without private
philanthropy and support, there is no museum,” he said emphatically.
That, he said without elaboration, was “more important” than feuds or the wishes
of individuals.
In introducing Herenton, Chamber president and CEO John
Moore had been at pains to credit the mayor with numerous positive achievements,
mostly in the sphere of economic development. This was a seeming response to
campaign rhetoric in which Herenton had frequently challenged the Chamber to own
up to his accomplishments.
In his own summing up Thursday, the mayor ticked off some
of the city’s blessings. Memphis possessed affordable housing and an inviting
tax base. It was “the largest air-cargo destination center in the world…the
largest mail-processing center in the United States… the second-largest
manufacturer of orthopedic-device medical devices in the United States.”
And, he said, Memphis was the smallest city to have both a
major airline hub (Northwest) and a National Basketball Association franchise.
“This city’s best days are ahead of us,” Herenton
concluded. “Let us embrace change and diversity. Let us be one city. I want to
be a part of that.”
In a brief
Q-and-A session with reporters afterward, the mayor attempted to minimize the
brewing argument between himself and the city council over who gets to appoint
council staff. “I never have selected anybody,” he said, stressing that his
mayoral prerogative to make such appointments was largely a formality – but one
he was prepared to litigate in order to preserve.